Autarky is the quality of being self-sufficient; the term is usually applied to political states or their economic systems. Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance or international trade. If a self-sufficient economy also refuses all trade with the outside world then it is called a closed economy.[1] The term "closed economy" is also used technically as an abstraction to allow consideration of a single economy without taking foreign trade into account – i.e. as the antonym of open economy. Autarky in the political sense is not necessarily an economic phenomenon; for example, a military autarky would be a state that could defend itself without help from another country, or could manufacture all of its weapons without any imports from the outside world.

Autarky may be a policy of a state or other entity when it seeks to be self-sufficient as a whole, but also can be limited to a narrow field such as possession of a key raw material. For example, many countries have a policy of autarky with respect to foodstuffs[5] and water for national security reasons. By contrast, autarky may be a result of economic isolation or external circumstances in which a state or other entity reverts to localized production when it lacks currency or excess production to trade with the outside world.[6][7]

The word autarky is from the Greek: αὐτάρκεια, which means "self-sufficiency" (derived from αὐτο-, "self," and ἀρκέω, "to suffice"). The term is sometimes confused with autocracy (Greek: αὐτoκρατία "government by single absolute ruler") or autarchy (Greek: αὐταρχία – the idea of rejecting government and ruling oneself and no other).

Early state societies that can be regarded as autarkic include nomadic pastoralism and palace economy, though over time these tend towards becoming less self-sufficient and more interconnected. The late Bronze Age, for example, saw formerly self-sufficient palace economies rely more heavily on trade, which may have been a contributing factor to the eventual Bronze Age Collapse when multiple crises hit those systems at once.

Medieval communes combined an attempt at overall economic self-sufficiency through the use of common lands and resources with mutual defense pacts against the depredations of the local nobility. Many of these communes later became trading powers such as the Hanseatic League. In some cases, communal village economies maintained their own debt system[8] as part of a self-sufficient economy and to avoid reliance on possibly hostile aristocratic or business interests.

Autarkic ambitions[9] can also be seen in the Populist backlash to the exploitations of free trade in the late 19th-century and in many early Utopian Socialist movements. Mutual aid societies like the Grange and Sovereigns of Industry attempted to set up self-sufficient economies (with varying degrees of success) in an effort to be less dependent on what they saw as an exploitative economic system and to generate more power to push for reforms.

Early socialist movements used these autarkic efforts to build their base with institutions like the Bourse de travail, socialist canteens and food assistance. These played a major role in securing workers' loyalty and building those parties into increasingly powerful institutions (especially in Europe) throughout the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. Through these cooperatives[10] "workers bought Socialist bread and Socialist shoes, drank Socialist beer, arranged for Socialist vacations and obtained a Socialist education."

Right-wing totalitarian governments that have claimed to strive for autarky have often pursued a very different policy in fact, just as some claimed to be in favor of socialism while killing socialists. In 1921 Italian Fascists attacked existing left-wing autarkic projects at the behest of large landowners, destroying roughly 119 labor chambers, 107 cooperatives and 83 peasant offices that year alone.[12]Nazi Germany under economics minister Hjalmar Schacht claimed to strive for self-sufficiency but still pursued major international trade, albeit under a different system, to escape the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The regime would continue to conduct trade, including with countries like the United States, including connections with major companies like IBM and Coca-Cola.

Economic self-sufficiency was pursued as a goal by some members of the Non-Aligned Movement, such as India under Jawaharlal Nehru[13] and Tanzania,[14] under the ideology of Ujamaa.[15] That was partly an effort to escape the economic domination of both the United States and the Soviet Union while modernizing the countries' infrastructure.

Small-scale autarkies were sometimes used by the Civil Rights Movement, such as in the case of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, where boycotters set up their own self-sufficient system of cheap or free transit to allow black residents to get to work and avoid using the then-segregated public systems in a successful effort to bring political pressure.

After World War II, Autonomist efforts in Europe embraced autarkic projects in an effort to craft anti-authoritarian left-wing spaces, especially influencing the social center and squatters' rights movements. Such efforts remain a common feature of Autonomist and anarchist movements on the continent today. The Micropolis social centre in Greece, for example, has gyms, restaurants, bars, meeting space and free distribution of food and resources.[16]

Around 1970, the Black Panther Party moved away from communist internationalism towards "intercommunalism," a term coined[17] by Huey P. Newton, "to retain a grasp on the local when the rest of radical thought seemed to be moving global." Intercommunalism drew[18] from left-wing autarkic projects like free medical clinics and breakfast programs, "explicitly articulated as attempts to fill a void left by the failure of the federal government to provide resources as basic as food to black communities."

Autarkic efforts to counter forcible privatization of public resources and maintain local self-sufficiency also formed a key part of alter-globalization efforts. The Cochabamba Water War had Bolivians successfully oppose the privatization of their water system to keep the resource in public hands.[19]

Today, national economic autarkies are relatively rare. A commonly-cited example is North Korea, based on the government ideology of Juche (self-sufficiency), which is concerned with maintaining its domestic localized economy in the face of its isolation. However, even North Korea has extensive trade with Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Vietnam, and many countries in Europe and Africa. North Korea had to import food during a widespread famine in the 1990s.

A better modern example at a societal level is the autonomous region of Rojava, the autonomous northern region of Syria. Cut off from international trade, facing multiple enemies, and striving for a society based on democratic confederalism and the ideals of Murray Bookchin, Rojava's government and constitution emphasize economic self-sufficiency[20] directed by neighborhood and village councils, with property and business belonging to those who live in or use it towards that goal.

An example of an contemporary effort at localized autarky, incorporating the concept's history from black nationalism, Ujamaa and African-American socialism and the civil rights movement, is Cooperation Jackson,[21] a movement aimed at creating a self-sufficient black working class economy in Jackson, Mississippi. The movement has aimed[22] to secure land and build self-sufficient cooperatives and workplaces "to democratically transform the political economy of the city" and push back against gentrification. Cooperation Jackson also saw a gain in electoral political power when its involvement proved pivotal to the 2013 mayoral election of Chokwe Lumumba and the 2017 election of his son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

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